U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing
September 23, 2026
Standing Up for Women in Sports: Ensuring Opportunity,
Fairness and Safety for Female Athletes
On September 23, 2026, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing on men in women’s sports.
In invited testimony presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee, KGR Partner, Bill Bock described the present moment in women’s sports as a crossroads – a time at which “more men are competing in women’s sports than ever before” and in which sports organizations and the Congress must decide whether women’s athletic opportunities will be meaningfully protected or instead eroded by men competing in women’s sports. He called for action, saying for too long, “women’s rights have been pushed to the back of the bus by too many sports administrators and organizations.”
Bock framed the fight for fairness in women’s sports as a civil rights issue – the right of female athletes to compete on a level playing field, access women-only teams, and feel safe on the playing field and in women-only spaces such as locker rooms. He observed that women’s sports were created so that girls and women could have the opportunity to compete and win and to celebrate their achievements as female athletes.
Mr. Bock outlined three foundational principles Congress must require to safeguard women’s sports:
- Clear sex-based categories for athletic eligibility;
- Mandatory, non-intrusive sex verification testing (typically a simple saliva test); and
- Legal accountability for sports organizations that fail to protect women’s rights to fair competition and access to women-only teams, locker rooms, and showers.
Bock testified that males possess “insurmountable biological advantages” over females, which make the sex-based eligibility categories of men’s and women’s and boy’s and girl’s teams and competitions essential for protecting women’s equal opportunities to fairness and safety in sports. He warned that current policies of many women’s professional sports leagues, some national governing bodies in Olympic and Paralympic sports, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and other scholastic sports organizations allow men to compete in women’s sports, eroding women’s equal opportunities that Title IX and the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act were intended to protect.
Bock urged lawmakers to adopt clear sex-based eligibility standards, mandatory, non-intrusive, inexpensive sex verification screening (via a simple cheek swab) to protect women’s and girl’s opportunities in sport, and to hold sport governing bodies accountable for protecting women’s and girl’s opportunities.
He described sex verification as a simple safeguard – a way to keep the promise of fair play and a level playing field that women’s sports were built upon and stated that SRY gene detection is a reliable method for verifying sex and preventing misuse of changeable birth certificates and inadequate self-identification policies. He also noted that too often biologically inaccurate and ideologically driven terminology has been inserted into sports rules, saying, “No one is assigned a sex at birth. They ARE their sex at birth.”
The hearing featured multiple witnesses and Senators discussing fairness, safety, and eligibility in women’s sports.
You can watch the replay here: Standing Up for Women in Sports: Ensuring Opportunity, Fairness and Safety for Female Athletes | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
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